A lover of music and a concert-level violinist, Sidereal Taurus Jack Kevorkian was a happy soldier in the war against the laws that interfere with our right to die was we want, not spread eagled on a bed of pain, tortured by infirmity, demented by drugs and robbed of our humanity.

Jack Kevorkian and James Arness, both born five years apart on May 26, can serve to help us understand the Taurus extremes. Kevorkian had both Sun and Mercury in Taurus and a Moon in Leo. He couldn't mentally or emotionally handle the idea of a death without dignity. With all his aggression actually sublimated into helping people, Mars in Pisces, he was a very sensitive person, although his detractors would characterize him as the typical Taurus vampire, ghoulishly tracking down suffering hospice patients in order to kill them. Kevorkian simply registered his sympathy for people in pain, diseased or crippled, those who hopelessly foresaw nothing worth living for. Kevorkian was forthright, unafraid of death, as the last bodily act we perform.

As with ALL Taurus, nothing about the body scared him, and he scoffed derisively at his critics, calling them hypocrites who were squeamishly avoiding as important a component of our life span as birth. Kevorkian also had little or no faith the medical industry's ability to deal with death or in the church's guarantee of an afterlife, much less in the politicians legislating against self-imposed death. He was a typical Taurus materialist existentialist, death was natural, inevitable, and nothing to get excited about. His stubborn nature made him the anathema of the starchy legal system that makes suicide illegal and the balky religious mindset that makes it immoral. He flouted all these forces, as much a rebel as Malcolm X in repudiating irrational authority with sharp logic and direct action, except he was fighting on behalf of those too sick or feeble to even seize the most basic human right of all: to end ones life with honor.

The TV Lawman

James Arness was a shy retiring Taurus, with a Virgo Moon that earned him the nickname of the "Greta Garbo of Dodge City." Acting more like a homeboy than the handsome Hollywood star he was, he married for keeps, was widowed, and then married again until his death. Arness portrayed himself; the classic stoic man-of-few-words, who stands his ground.

Arness showed another side of Taurus in his most famous role as the sturdy, stubborn Sheriff of Dodge city. He also had Taurus Sun and Mercury, but his Moon was in crafty, humble Virgo. The sextile of his Moon and Neptune made him a compassionate cop. He wanted to help. He volunteered for the army in 1943, at the height of World War Two, and was seriously wounded during the invasion of Italy. These wounds would eventually prevent him from riding a horse.

He lived to serve, as did his character, Marshall Matt Dillon, the only law West of the Pecos. Arness played his role with a quiet strength and dogged respect for the law at any cost. Sidereal Gemini Milbern Stone played the crusty, quixotic town doctor, fellow Sidereal Taurus Dennis Weaver played his sidekick and deputy. Weaver was replaced by another sidereal Gemini—Ken Curtis. Arness played out the Western myths as they filtered down to the common man and women on his weekly TV show, "Gunsmoke"—which played from 1955 to 1975, was one of the longest running TV shows in history. Gunsmoke avoided the usual shoot-em-ups common to most Westerns of the time, and instead, involved the tragedy of poverty, alienation and misery of dirt farmers and working-class cowboys. Gunsmoke tackled lynchings, domestic violence, and economic crime, something very few TV shows did in the 50s.

Embedded in the show was a remarkable—for the time—admission of relationship between the Marshall and a prostitute, the role played by Amanda Blake, a Sidereal Aquarius. The unspoken agreement between then two characters was another expression of the open attitude Taurus often has about sex and physical desire.